About Us

The Women’s Court of Canada is an innovative project bringing together academics, activists, and litigators in order literally to rewrite the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms equality jurisprudence. Taking inspiration from Oscar Wilde, who once said “the only duty we owe to history is to rewrite it”, the Women’s Court operates as a virtual court, and ‘reconsiders’ leading equality decisions. The Women’s Court  renders alternative decisions as a means of articulating fresh conceptions of substantive equality.

 

Members of the Women’s Court of Canada

Gwen Brodsky
Melina Buckley
Marie Chen
Rachel Cox
Shelagh Day
Mary Eberts
Avvy Go
Jennifer Koshan
Diana Majury
Sharon McIvor
Teressa Nahanee
Margaret Parsons
Dianne Pothier
Denise Réaume
Kate Stephenson
Margot Young

 

Court Co-ordination

Melina Buckley
Shelagh Day
Jennifer Koshan
Diana Majury
Denise Réaume

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Melina Buckley is a lawyer and legal policy consultant working primarily in constitutional and human rights, access to justice, and dispute resolution. She is counsel to the Canadian Bar Association in its test case litigation on the constitutional right to civil legal aid and has represented interveners in several cases at the Supreme Court of Canada including in Symes, Meiorin, Little Sisters, Via Rail, and Christie. She holds a Ph.D. in law from the University of British Columbia.

Gwen Brodsky, LL.B. (University of Victoria, 1981); LL.M. (Harvard, 1994); Ph.D. (Osgoode Hall, 1999), practises, writes, teaches in the areas of human rights law, and constitutional law.  She has acted as counsel on many Charter equality rights cases, including Andrews, Swain, Mossop, Thibaudeau, Gould, Vriend, Meiorin and Gosselin.  She has taught in the University of British Columbia Faculty of Law and in the Akitsiraq Law Program in Iqualuit.  She has written extensively about equality rights theory, human rights law, and the Charter.  She was the first Litigation Director of the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund.  She is a Director of the Poverty and Human Rights Centre.

Rachel Cox has been a Professor of Law at the University of Québec in Montréal (UQAM) since January 2009.  She is specialized in the area of research-action, focussing on women’s equality rights and the health and safety of women workers. She is affiliated with an interdisciplinary research team based at the University of Québec in Montréal that works in partnership with unions on a variety of issues related to the health of women workers (“L’invisible qui fait mal” or When Invisibility is Harmful…). She is currently completing her PhD in Law at the University of Ottawa where she is affiliated with the Canada Research Chair on Occupational Health and Safety Law.

Shelagh Day is an expert on women’s human rights, and an author of articles and books on equality rights and anti-discrimination law. Currently, she is a Director of the Poverty and Human Rights Centre, whose goal is to strengthen the human rights of the poorest women, as well as Human Rights Chair for the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action. In 2008 she was awarded the Governor General’s Award in Commemoration of the Person’s Case for her contributions to advancing the equality of women in Canada.

Mary Eberts was retained by the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) in 1992 to work on its claim for a seat at the table during the Charlottetown Accord negotiations. She has continued to do counsel work for the NWAC since that time, focusing on constitutional, membership, and violence issues at the Supreme Court of Canada and trial and appellate courts in various Canadian jurisdictions. Mary received her B.A. and LL.B. from University of Western Ontario and her LL.M. from Harvard. She taught in the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto and has held the Gordon Henderson Chair in Human Rights in the Faculty of Law at the University of Ottawa. Mary is a co-founder of the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund and was first chair of its National Legal Committee. She practises constitutional,  equality,  and Aboriginal law throughout Canada from an office in Toronto. Her honours include the Governor-General’s Gold Medal of Honour in the Persons’ Case and the Law Society Medal.

Jennifer Koshan is an associate professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Calgary. Her research and teaching interests are in the areas of constitutional law, human rights, violence against women, feminist legal theory, and public interest advocacy. She was on the steering committee for the Women’s Court of Canada project.

Diana Majury teaches in the Law Department at Carleton University in Ottawa. Her teaching and research interests lie in equality theory and practice, human rights, criminal law, feminist legal theory, and law and literature.  In its inclusive approach to judging, the Women’s Court of Canada allows for non-judicial participation on the Court. With thanks and admiration for those who have done the hard work of decision writing, Diana has played a solely administrative/introductory role on the Court.

Sharon McIvor is an Nle’kepmxcin woman and member of the Lower Nicola First Nation in Merritt, British Columbia. She is a mother of four and a grandmother of six. Sharon was called to the Bar of British Columbia after graduating from the Faculty of Law at the University of Victoria and has a practice in Merritt. She is an instructor at Nicola Valley Institute of Technology, chair of the Feminist Alliance for International Action, and chair of Syemycin Transition House Society, a shelter for Aboriginal women and children victims of violence. As an Aboriginal feminist activist of over twenty years in the field, she has marched in the streets and argued two cases in the Supreme Court of Canada. She is a former board member of the Native Women’s Association of Canada and has served in this capacity for a decade. She continues her work as an activist for Aboriginal women and women’s rights in Canada.

Teressa Nahanee is a member of the Squamish Indian Band in North Vancouver, British Columbia. She is a term instructor at Nicola Valley Institute of Technology and practises law part time. She is a land manager with the Upper Nicola Band of British Columbia. She served eighteen years with Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, including in the Minister’s Office for two years and with the Secretary of the State Department. She has served with Ministers David Crombie and Lucien Bouchard. Her specialty is communications and information.

Dianne Pothier has been teaching in the Faculty of Law at Dalhousie University since 1986 (full professor since 2001). Teaching and research subjects include constitutional, conflicts, public, labour, human rights, equality, and disability. In 2005, Dianne received a Frances Fish Women Lawyers’ Achievement Award from the Nova Scotia Association of Women and the Law.

Denise Réaume is professor of law at the University of Toronto, where she teaches discrimination law as well as torts. She is also a Visiting Professor at Oxford University. Her recent work on equality includes “Harm and Fault in Discrimination Law: A Tort Perspective on Recent Developments” (2001) 2 Theoretical Inquiries in Law 349; “Of Pigeon Holes and Principles: A Reconsideration of Discrimination Law” (2002) 40 Osgoode Hall Law Journal 113; “Discrimination and Dignity” (2003) 63 Louisiana Law Review 645; “The Relevance of Relevance to Equality Rights” (2006) 31 Queen’s Law Journal 696; and “Dignity, Equality and Second Generation Rights,” forthcoming in Margot Young, Susan Boyd, Gwen Brodsky, and Shelagh Day eds., Poverty: Rights, Social Citizenship and Governance (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007).

M. Kate Stephenson is Director of Legal Services at the Ontario Human Rights Legal Support Centre (HRLSC) in Toronto, on leave from her position as a litigation partner at WeirFoulds LLP.  She was called to the Bar in 1996 and over the years has litigated in a variety of areas including constitutional, administrative, commercial, estates, human rights and employment law.  At the HRLSC, she oversees and participates in litigation primarily before the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario.  She has argued before all levels of court, including the Supreme Court of Canada, and she has been co-counsel in constitutional challenges involving sections 2, 7, 8, 12 and 15 of the Charter. Kate was the first person to be awarded the Advocates Society’s Arleen Goss Young Advocate’s Award, inaugurated in 2004 to recognize a lawyer who has been engaged in practice for less than 10 years, and who has a record of innovative, passionate advocacy, and concern for social justice.  She is a past co-chair of the National Legal Committee of the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund.  She is currently on the Board of Directors of the Income Security Advocacy Centre, in Toronto, and is a member of the Charter Committee on Poverty Issues.

Women’s Court of Canada Founding Members (from left): Kate Stephenson (with Casey), Teressa Nahanee, Diana Majury, Mary Eberts, Margot Young, Shelagh Day, Gwen Brodsky, Jennifer Koshan, Denise Reaume, Sharon McIvor, Melina Buckley.